Love Bug (The Prescotts Book 3), Tara Wyatt [best mobile ebook reader .txt] 📗

leg back to the floor and then bent and picked up her phone, handing it to her. She took it with a small smile and adjusted herself, smoothing her hands over her blouse and pants. She could feel the weight of Max’s gaze on her.

The elevator chimed and the doors slid open. “This is me,” she said stiffly, wanting to put some space between them before he had the chance to reject her again. She wasn’t sure her bruised heart could take it, especially after the sheer joy of having his mouth on hers again after two long months. She stepped out of the elevator and started to walk away, a heaviness descending on her.

“Willa, wait!”

Unable to stop herself, she glanced back to find Max standing on the threshold of the elevator, his palms on the elevator doors, holding them open. God, he was so unbelievably sexy, all stretched out like that, giving her an unobstructed view of his broad, muscled frame.

“Have dinner with me. Tonight.”

She turned and took a step back toward him. “What kind of dinner? The kind where you try to let me down gently?”

He closed his eyes briefly and then shook his head. “I can’t blame you for thinking that,” he said. “But no. The kind of dinner where I take you on a date. Where we can talk.”

She swallowed thickly and licked her lips. “Tell me now if you’re just going to reject me again, because I don’t think I can take—”

He stepped out of the elevator and cupped her face, kissing her in front of she didn’t even know how many people. All the conversation around them died away almost instantly.

“Like I said,” he murmured, his thumbs stroking over her cheekbones. “I don’t know how to stay away from you. So I’m done trying.” He kissed her again, a sweeter, softer kiss. “Have dinner with me. Please.”

She nodded, pulling in a shaky breath. “Okay. Dinner.”

He kissed her forehead in a shockingly tender gesture and then let her go, stepping back and pressing the call button for the elevator. She could feel several pairs of curious eyes on her, but she didn’t care. She waited until he’d disappeared inside, feeling as though everything had just been flipped upside down and turned inside out.

Max was Mr. 23.

Max wanted to take her on a date.

Max, who still had secrets and a past and was her boss.

Max, who thought he needed to stay away from her for mysterious reasons.

Max, who she already knew she was going to give her heart to.

12

Sitting alone at the table he’d reserved at the best sushi restaurant in all of Manhattan, Max smoothed a hand over the front of his black button-down shirt, wondering if he should’ve worn something else. He’d tried on four other shirts before finally deciding on this one and pairing it with gray dress pants. All of the others—the green collared shirt, the gray V-neck sweater, the gray button down, the dark blue long-sleeved shirt—hadn’t seemed quite right.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this nervous about…anything. He’d had important meetings with investors that had made him way less anxious than he was feeling right now. He’d been on plenty of first dates, he’d fired people, he’d taken a major tech company public, and had handled all kinds of difficult situations in both his personal and professional life. And none of them had made him feel like this, like he might throw up because breathing was making him nauseous.

Then again, none of those other things had been Willa. None of those other things had mattered, truly. Not the way she did. She’d always mattered. And while he wasn’t one to look for signs or messages from the Universe or whatever, the fact that she was Fresh Princess had to mean something. Had to be proof that as terrifying as it was, she was supposed to be in his life. They’d been matched with staggering compatibility and the weeks of messages had only served to deepen his feelings for her.

He pulled out his phone and scrolled back through the hundreds and hundreds of messages he’d exchanged with her over the past few weeks, smiling to himself as he reread some of them. Now that he knew Fresh Princess was Willa, it made total sense as to why he’d been so drawn to her. Why he’d thought she was warm and sweet and adorable and it felt so fucking good just talking to her. Because that was Willa. She was the only person he’d ever met who felt like pure sunshine. The only person he’d ever met who’d made him feel less broken than he believed himself to be.

He’d meant it when he’d told her earlier that he didn’t know how to stay away from her. He’d tried for two months and it had been pure hell. Absolute torture. In the back of his mind, he knew he still probably shouldn’t be doing this, but he couldn’t push her away again. He didn’t have the strength, both for his own selfish reasons and because the thought of hurting her again made him want to throw up. And that meant he was left with only one option: try. Try like hell to move past the broken shards of his past, for her sake. Try to see himself as someone worthy of being with a woman like her. Try to give her what she needed. He had to, for her. For them.

God. Them. Just the thought had his stomach tightening, heat warming him from the inside out.

He glanced up from his phone and spotted her weaving her way between the tables towards him. The sight of her was like an electrical jolt to his system, leaving him tingling and hyperaware of his body, as though he could feel every single nerve ending. She lifted her hand in a wave, shooting him a tentative, almost shy smile. Slipping his phone back in his pocket, he stood as she approached.

“Hi,” she said,